To Marietta from Paris, Signed by Susan Mary Alsop
[Signed to Newspaper Columnist Rowland Evans] Alsop, Susan Mary. To Marietta from Paris, 1945-1960. First Edition. 1975. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition. Book is warmly inscribed, “For dear Kay and Rowlie, with fond love from Susan Mary, September 20, 1975.” Foreword by Marietta Tree.
The Duchess of Windsor once quipped that she could never be the lover of Duff Cooper because it would mean having to be best friends with his wife, the indomitable Lady Diana. Though not mentioned in this book, she could have been referring to Susan Mary Alsop, who was one of Duff’s mistresses in the To Marietta from Paris years but was equally devoted to Diana. That, however, trivializes the beautiful Susan Mary, who, as wife of a minor but charming American diplomatic attaché, took Paris by storm in the post-war years when it had replaced London as the place to be. The perceptive letters Susan Mary wrote to her lifelong friend Marietta Tree are the perfect mix of high-low, as political as they are social, as gossipy as they are cultured. With cameos by various Churchills and Kennedys, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Christian Dior, Babe Paley, Nancy Mitford, David and Evangeline Bruce, and many others. This copy was signed to an important Washington, DC columnist and his wife Kay, a great friend of Susan’s Mary’s who was also her de facto research assistant on a subsequent book.
“Thanks for the Communist Party, we have had a lovely Christmas and pre-Christmas. We haven’t had a breakdown in telephone or electricity for ten days and everyone from the cook to the prince de Broglie firmly believe that it must be because [Communist Party Secretary] Maurice Thorez has moved in two blocks away ….”
--Susan Mary Alsop